Before Beasts, There Was Light
by LoweFantasy
Summary: Tala has been pulled out from the frozen tundra and now his ice cocoon is the only thing stopping their stolen ship from sinking. Once he wakes up, the ice will melt, and they will be plunged to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. With Max severely injured, Ayah spent, and the rest of the team exhausted, their fate may be left to Ayah's emaciated brother of light. Who hates them.
1. Beasts Series Order

**Order of the "Before Beasts" series:**

 _Sound_  
 _Fire_  
 _Wind_  
 _Water_  
 _Metal_  
 _Storms_  
 _Lightning_  
 _Ice_  
 _Light_  
 _Time_


	2. Old Brother

Before Beasts, There Was Light

Book 9

By LoweFantasy

1

Tyson's loud smacking noises woke him. At least it wasn't nakedness or vomiting or any of the other unpleasant ways he had been thrust back into consciousness over the past whatever.

"Could you eat any louder?" Kai groaned.

Tyson added in obnoxious 'Nom nom nom's to that.

"I'm going to burn off your scalp."

"Not before trying Ray's most recent creation," said Tyson. "It's gooooood."

"As your stupid moaning hinted at."

"Better hurry before I eat it all—and you know I could."

Snuffling like an angry dog, Kai wriggled out from the mass of sleeping bags and blankets to squint out into the light. He still felt colder than he'd like to be, but at least the majority of the pain had passed. And the plate of brightly colored sushi brought to light how achingly empty his stomach had become. It seemed like this whole adventure had been spent either starving, exhausted, or in pain.

It wasn't till he had drowsily sunk to the floor, bringing half the bed with him, and started eating that his mind started returning to him: Ayah, her brother, Tala, the warships, the hole in their own ship.

"Didn't this ship get hit?" Kai asked once he'd swallowed.

"Oh, yeah. Huge hole in the side. Max actually got sucked into it, and good thing he did. He was able to keep the water at bay until Tala came."

"I don't appreciate this baited way of storytelling. Just tell me what happened."

"Calm your freaking tits, my mouth was full!" Even so, Tyson shoved three more bites of sushi into his mouth before continuing. "Tala was amazing. He just went up to Ayah, told her to start singing, then bashed his beyblade against the side of the boat. Guess she was able to hear what she needed to from that, 'cause next thing I know she's tweeting like a flute and this freaking ice storm blows in and then it's just _freezes._ I mean, everything just got iced, like, all the water turned to ice and those big ass ships of death just stopped and started blaring horns and—wait, how come we didn't freeze?"

Kai swallowed his mouthful of fish and nudged Tyson. "Tala?"

"He froze up the hole in the bunk, what else do you want to know?"

"Where is he?"

"Oh! Yeah. Get this: he's the ice blocking up the hole. He even made a big deal of pushing off that weird instinct to just fall asleep and…whatever, until he was down by the hole next to Max. Then he just dove into the water and everything froze. He actually froze Max's feet with the water on accident, so we had to chisel him out. Poor guy has this nasty burn on his arm and it got all cracked up and started bleeding from the cold." Tyson stuffed a sushi roll in his mouth but kept talking, "I'm gonna go check on him after this, see if Ayah's gotten to it yet."

Both the mention of Max's burn (which he had gotten from dumping Kai into a fire in order to save his life), and Ayah instantly darkened any hope Kai had had for the day being a pleasant one.

Tyson seemed to sense the sudden change in Kai's mood, for he quickly swallowed and added, "Uh, you're not going to, like…do anything stupid? I mean, with her brother and her and all."

When Kai just stood up without saying anything and made his way to some clothes, Tyson said, rather desperately now, "Please promise me no stupid!"

That made Kai pause. "What?"

"Come on, you know in all the shows when the dude gets jealous and ends up blowing up at the girl and doing all this crap he regrets?"

"I'm not a TV show."

"But you're kind of dumb when it comes to your emotions," said Tyson carefully, cringing when Kai sent him a withering glare.

"I'm not going to hurt her," Kai said, wondering who Tyson took him for. Yeah, Kai expected himself to hurt her on accident on every turn, but Tyson hadn't the same sense as him. He would blindly believe in his friends…who was he kidding? Tyson was always the first one to call him out on his dickholery.

So he repeated, this time to himself to firm his resolve, "I'm not going to take anything out on her." Then, uncertainly, and without really meaning to, he added, "I don't really know what I'm supposed to do."

"I hear talking is always a safe default."

Kai snorted. "I think you're the last one who should be giving relationship advice."

"Hey, I got way healthier relationships than you do, girlfriends or not."

He had a point. Ugh.

As he tucked in his tail into his pants and his wings into his jacket, he tried to piece together what exactly he would talk to Ayah about. How would he even begin? He couldn't even get the first few words out. Was he supposed to describe how he felt? Or how unfair it was that she should throw herself on him and confess her love just to turn around and lay possibly naked with her ex-fiancé' just because he had hypothermia? Weren't there other people on board who could have done that? The fact that he was her long lost brother aside…

"How would you even start a conversation like that?" said Tyson suddenly, as though reading his thoughts.

"Nothing you have to worry about." Kai zipped up his coat. "Pass me the plate."

Tyson did so, and Kai shoved down a bit more sushi for the go.

"I don't see why you're in such a hurry. It's not like anything pleasant is waiting for you out there, and it's warm in here."

"You're definition of warm is paltry compared to mine," said Kai.

"Oh, excuse me. Forgot I was talking to the Lava Lord. Well, it's gonna be downright freezing out there. The warships were blocking our way south so Ray's been taking us North. I'm surprised we haven't hit an iceberg like Titanic already."

 _Don't jinx us_ , Kai thought blithely, then stepped over the mess of blankets that he and Tyson had been using while they ate and took hold of the doorknob. Once he'd steeled himself, he twisted the knob and slipped out into the world of cold.

It wasn't until his boot slipped on a patch of ice and he fell hard into the side of the cabin that he realized the ship was leaning starboard. Figuring it could only be the added weight or buoyancy of Tala and his ice, he made his way to the door that would lead to the bowels of the ship, bunching his shoulders up against the slapping sting of the air. He all but ran inside once he found the door and just caught himself from hurtling head over heels down the metal stairs.

 _Perhaps I should have asked where Tala was first,_ he thought as he rubbed his aching hands together. Without any form of gloves, his hands tingled with numbness as though he had been in the cold for hours. Even ir the warships had been in their way, it had been foolhardy to head North. Their glorified tugboat wasn't made for the ice, and Tyson didn't realize how right he had been in his apprehension of ice burgs. Alas, their course was just one of the many things he would have to fix once he was done checking on the wolf.

It wasn't hard. All Kai had to do was follow the way to the same hold he had hid in to work out to pounding Rachmoninov concertos.

The large containment hold had transformed into an enormous freezer. The crates of supplies that had come with the ship could barely be seen through a thick layer of snow-like frost, and icicles hung sharp and foreboding from the metal rafter beams. Every surface had been frosted with white, including the window of the control room, which also had the words _Tyson wuz here_ drawn across it with a smiley face and a crude hand gesture.

And there, against the far side which made the side of their bulkhead, was a round, nearly car sized egg of opaque ice.

Wary of the icicles above him, Kai cautiously stepped across the roughly textured ice to the mound. Every step proved to intensify his shivering. Half way there, he changed his mind about getting close, and figured it would probably be better if the denizen of fire didn't get up and personal with Tala's ice cocoon.

So he retreated, looked back longingly at the ice egg holding his old teammate, and made sure to close the door tightly behind him.

Just as he reached the top of the first flight of stairs and turned the corner, Ayah all but crashed into him. A thin layer of ice he hadn't noticed before made him slip and crash back into the railings, bruising his poor, cramped wings.

Ayah squeaked at his grunt of pain. "Kai! I'm so sorry, I just wanted too—"

He shoved her off. The feel of her weight against him had brought the thought of her brother flush to his consciousness.

She stumbled, but caught herself on the stairs. "Kai…?"

"I…" he stopped himself, momentarily overwhelmed. No matter what Tyson had said, this wasn't jealousy. This was another creature entirely that gnawed away at his insides with a fire that wasn't his, yet it froze his blood at the same time. It hurt more than anything else that had happened to him since they had headed out. He almost couldn't see past it to his surroundings.

It frightened him. Physical pain he had plenty of experience with, and it could be dealt. This, though…

He didn't hear what Ayah had to say. He stepped around her and all but ran up the stairs, suddenly desperate to be away from her. The cold outside was nothing to the cold inside him.

He had meant to run back to his bedroom, to Tyson and any sushi that might be left, to hole up somewhere and forget about it all. But in his blind panic he went the wrong way and instead found himself stumbling into the kitchen, shivering so hard he had bitten his tongue twice. He didn't even notice Ray was there until he had pushed open the oven and all but shoved himself head first into the heated space taken up by a some sort of metal casserole dish.

"Kai! You're coat!"

He yanked himself back out. Thankfully, no spots or singes had appeared on his precious, heavy leather and fur coat.

Trembling and flushed with embarrassment, he closed the oven door and begun to painfully peel the jacket off.

"You okay?" Ray came around to crouch next to him.

"Cold," said Kai simply. "And you need to turn the ship around, or at least westward. We can't risk hitting any ice."

"Yeah, I already figured that." Ray was frowning in concern. "You don't look too good."

Kai gave him a droll look he hoped said "I just had my millionth near death experience and you expect me to be in perfect health?" Even so, he couldn't be sure what his face was doing, as his pathetic, cowardly mind still spun in circles.

"Did you eat something at least?" Ray asked.

"Back off. I'm a grown man, I can take care of myself."

"Alright, alright. Just don't ruin my bread by climbing into the oven, please." He stood and crossed his arms over his chest. "It's taken me days to get the dough to ferment. All this cold is killing the bacteria in the air."

Kai wrinkled his nose. "Ferment?"

"Sourdough," said Ray, as though Kai should know. "This boat didn't come with yeast, so I had to do it the old fashion way."

Eager to get his mind off his…episode, Kai shoved his attention back to the more important problems at hand. "You said you already took the ship West?"

"Yeah, towards Russia. There's no telling when Tala will wake up, and when he does, this ship's going down fast, so I thought it best that we stay in sight of land." Ray's mouth quirked into a dry smirk. "I'm a grown man, Kai, I can take care of myself, or at least trust me to use my head."

Kai received his second hit of humiliation for the day. Of course he could trust Ray to be smart. Ray was the only one he could trust to be smart.

Restraining a groan, he dropped back to his haunches and thunked his forehead against the warm front of the oven. Tala was fine. Everyone was fine. Even Ayah and her string cheese brother were fine. Why'd he even bother getting up?

"Kai?"

Kai sighed. "Never you mind?"

"…I guess this would be a bad time for me to say we need to get Max to a doctor."

Kai cringed. Why'd he get up indeed.

 **Sorry for the late update, ya'll. Internet problems again. But I have my own internet now so late updates will be a thing of the past! And thank you for all the wonderful reviews on "Ice." After reading them, I was so happy and inspired that I wrote, like, 10,000 words that same day, which was a good thing because I actually didn't have anything of "Light" yet. But now I have most of it completed thanks to you! Please, continue to let me know what you think, good or bad. It really does...you know...**


	3. A Sacrifice is Not Always Good

**Something happens at the end of this book that I did not plan, that I did not want, but happened anyways and I couldn't think a way around without being untrue to the story and making the story suck...so, back here at chapter 2, I apologize. I'll probably apologize then too.**

 **But I believe strongly in happy endings, so let that pull you through.**

2

Perhaps if Kai had been paying more attention to his surroundings rather than his damn girly feelings, he would have noticed the state Ayah had been when she'd crashed into him in the stairwell.

The girl had gone from simply white and pale to a gray color. Everything from her hair to her wings had taken on a drained, washed out shade, and the circles under her eyes and grown to engulf them, highlighting the edges of her eye sockets to give her a sunken, haunted look. Her lips had become cracked and dry, and even as she stood before Kai in the control room with the patched up Max beside her, she shook and one of her feathers fell to the floor.

Even with her glassy stick of a brother passed out in the corner on the communal patch of mattresses, whatever emotional agony he had fled was suddenly the last thing on his mind.

"How did you let yourself get like this?" he asked, sick with himself. It took everything he had not to rush forward and scoop her up or start punching things.

"She spent the past day and half vibrating warmth and who knows what else into her brother," said Ray, his mouth thin and tight. "She hasn't been eating, let alone sleeping."

"He would have died," she said wearily, as though she had said it a dozen times before.

"You still could have left the keeping him warm to one of us," said Kai tersely.

"That's what I said," said Max, whose expression wasn't much different than Ray's. The usually bubbly boy looked ready to tie the poor girl down to a bed and force feed her—or slap her.

"You aren't allowed to get on my case about not taking care of myself after this," said Kai.

"Yeah, whatever, will you at least let me check on him?" And as her eyes darted to her sleeping brother in the corner, Kai felt a renewed surge of the ugly, painful burning-ice of before. Except this time, in the face of the death-like gray she had taken on, it took the form of rage rather than fear.

"I'm ready to let him die if you do," the words tasted of flame on his tongue.

Even Ray and Max, who must have felt the same way as him, looked startled at that.

Ayah just stared. The effect of her surprise was marred by her wobbling into Max, who caught her with his good arm. Any restraint Kai had on himself broke and he ate up the distance between them and had Ayah swept up into his arms, wings and all, before Max had the chance to react.

"Wait—I won't do anything, I just want to see—"

"Ray, Max, keep him alive, will you?" he forced himself to say.

Without waiting for their reply, he kicked open the door and carried her outside. He hadn't let her get on a coat, so he huffed out puffs of hot hair from his nose (which wasn't hard as his fire had flared at his anger) as he took her down from the control room and to the first free cabin he could reach.

There, he unceremoniously dropped her shivering form on the half-made bed.

"What is wrong with you?" she cried.

"What is wrong with _you?"_ and before he could stop himself, it all came pouring out. "You were so hung up on—on whether I would stay with you and kids and then you nearly kill yourself trying to warm up your old fiancé—you know you didn't have to do that, and yet you did anyways!"

"You don't know that!"

"Then tell me what exactly you needed to do that some food and heat couldn't? It isn't like you've had some secret power to heal disease or starvation before—"

"You're just mad because I can't heal Max."

"If that were all I really would be just mad. But now I'm furious," He took a step back as sparks fell from his mouth and the smell of burnt cotton filled the air. Ayah flinched, poor bruised eyes wide, and it was that momentary show of fear that snapped him back to his right mind.

His initial step turned into a full out retreat till his wings were pressed against the wall within his coat.

Why'd he get up today? Why didn't he just stay in the room with Tyson?

"I don't care that you can't heal Max," he said softly. Some part of him was desperately scrambling for salvation. "I just…I can't handle you doing this to yourself."

"You can't handle that I'm doing it for my brother," she said in that super soft tone that had previously proceeded her screeching them out cold. "Even after all I've said, all I've done, you don't trust me to know what I want."

He knew he should deny that and say something to the contrary, but he knew it to be a lie. He could say the other excuse, that it was because he couldn't see how she could want someone like him—that he wasn't secure in his own ability to make her happy, case and point with what was happening right now—but the ability to make excuses had been beaten out of him years ago by the Abbey and his own harsh self-discipline.

But even though he knew he had nothing to say to save himself, he also knew fleeing now, as he did in the stairwell, wouldn't fix it. He had already allowed himself to be cowardly once. He couldn't do it again. He wouldn't. Even though he suddenly felt sick with dread and that horrid, burning pain that couldn't just be jealousy.

He expected her to dismiss him. He even wouldn't put it pass her to stand up and slap him, at least verbally if not physically. When he heard the creak of the mattress as she stood, he braced himself for the impact. His heart trembled. He had, after all, screwed up. He wasn't sure how, but somehow it seemed that just by feeling jealousy in the first place he had lost the game.

When her soft, icy hands touched his face, however, they were gentle. Her thumbs caressed along his cheek bones.

"I'm sorry," she said, soft and gentle enough to make his breath waver. "I've never had to…I didn't even think it might…"

Her voice trailed off, and so did her strength. He caught her just in time. A new alarm went off in his head as he registered just how cold she had become. Cursing, he lifted her up again and laid her out on the bed once more, this time more gently.

"If you could only see what you look like right now," he started, just to stop at how strained the words had come.

"I know, I look like death," and now he recognized the softness to her voice as exhaustion, not gentleness.

He took in a shaky breath and turned his gaze away. "Did you really have to go so far?"

"…probably not. I was just so scared…Kai, I thought…I thought they were all dead."

And Kai knew he should have understood that from the beginning, even if the only family he had was an egomaniacal grandfather. It wasn't rocket science. So feeling a new depth of self-shame, he wordlessly slipped out of his coat, laid beside her, and wrapped himself, wings and all, as tight as he could about her, breathing out as much warmth as he dared without burning. His mind kicked into work mode: first to warm her up. Then fetch her some food and drink. He'd have to get someone to keep the string cheese warm else she might try to get up and do it herself again.

It was a few minutes before Kai realized, by her steady, low breathing, that she had fallen asleep with her hands twisted up in his shirt. His first thought was to close his eyes and go to sleep with her, but old habits and his character squirmed in discomfort at the idea of doing nothing while death still followed and safety still to be found. He should be up in the cabin, seeing where the nearest city was, planning how next to evade their pursuers and avoid being tracked.

And as he thought that, he suddenly remembered.

Kenny. Dranzer had told him to find Kenny. Kenny was the key to getting out of all this, to contacting wherever the others of their kind had fled. And Kai hadn't even told anyone yet.

He scanned about for a blanket. This was the room Ray had bunked up in when after he had found out about Kai and Ayah, if he wasn't mistaken. There was an unzipped sleeping bag and a comforter on the floor. Ayah cringed and whimpered when he pulled back his wings, and he nearly gave up on it all to curl back around her. But, biting his lip, he grabbed the unzipped sleeping bag and comforter and set to work tucking her in tight. He hunted down the room's lone space heater and cranked it up to high before giving her hair a last brush of his fingers, tucking his wings back into his coat, and slipping out.


	4. Breaking Point

3

Max and Ray were where he had left them. They must have been thinking along the same lines as him, as they were both leaning over the GPS system on the dashboard and conversing in low murmurs. They both readily made room for him as he stepped between them.

The map displaying their location was not a welcoming one. Icy, uncivilized expanse stretched out for some hundreds of miles. They had passed the Elutian Islands and reached the outstretches of frozen Russia, but not much in the way of cities or towns were here. Also, as Kai mentioned to Ray and Max, with hard winter now on them, most bays would be frozen up, so even if they did reach a town there would be a few miles of ice to traverse before reaching it.

"And a lot of these blips aren't even real towns," continued Kai. "They're mostly outposts for radio signal and the occasional researcher. The season for scientists and the such is out, however. No one is insane enough to traverse the Artic during its darkest, coldest months of the year."

"Yeah, it's creepy how dark it is most of the time," added Max as a peppy side note. "It's kind of cool. Like it's only day for a few hours and then the sun vanishes again."

Kai didn't mention that it wouldn't be so cool when their ship finally gave out and they were out on the ice, fending for themselves in constant subzero temperatures. He also didn't mention that these outposts most likely wouldn't have a doctor or antibiotics of any sorts as he took note of the blotchy flush beneath Max's freckles.

"On the plus side to Tala waking up," said Ray, "We'll have a backwoods survival pro and a dude who can control ice all rolled into one."

"Survival techniques can only do so much where no life was meant to be," said Kai, frowning. He tapped on a few of the dots signifying towns and pulled up any footnotes or censor data on them. Ray and Max made echoing noises of appreciation.

"I didn't know it could do that!" said Max.

Kai passed over the first few dots, as they just served to prove what he said about them being outposts. There was a good size supply town some way more south, but it was almost eight hundred miles away. He wrinkled his nose, retracted his search, and instead of going South went inland. Just as he had known, though, there was nothing. So he once more went back to the nearest town and calculated the distance and time. They could almost half the distance if they went out onto open water. However, if Tala woke up before they could reach it...but if he woke up while they were next to land, they wouldn't be much better, having hundreds of miles to traverse on foot in unforgiving, frozen wasteland. And there was no way they could just chisel Tala out and try to mend the hole themselves. They weren't sailors, and they were even less of shipwrights.

Max and Ray, who followed him throughout all this, kept a solemn silence.

In the corner of the cabin, Eiden, the sleeping light denizen, groaned and shifted.

"Could we fly?" asked Max after a bit.

"Despite what Tyson and Ayah may say, it's even colder in the sky. My body has ways to keep me warm while I fly, and Ayah probably vibrates the air about her to stay warm, but I don't know about Tyson. Last time he tried to fly was when we were two hundred or so miles farther south, and even then his lips were blue. Over a few thousands miles…"

"Not to mention Ayah isn't a strong enough flyer to carry anyone," added Ray. "Nor is her brother, no doubt. I don't know if he can even carry himself."

"And the waters too cold even for me now," said Max, almost sheepishly. "Shucks, all the powers of the universe and we can't even get out of the cold."

Which brought Kai to the other reason he had left Ayah. Without preampture, he launched into his dream with Dranzer and how she had told him to find Kenny and Dizzy, who was the guardian of space and time and could traverse the space necessary to get them to the other world their counterparts were on.

It just went to show how messed up their lives had gotten that this whole explanation was taken as fact rather than the sci-fi fantasy it sounded. Kai even found himself blushing afterwards, even though Ray and Max showed no sign of taking it other than seriously.

"It's no fair how all your bit beasts have talked to you," said Max with a mellow pout.

Ray furrowed his brow. "It's sick how none of this would have happened if we had just stayed in Japan. Why didn't she say anything when we were there? What kind of sadistic trip are they taking us on?"

"Just because they say a few things, doesn't mean their suddenly gods in control of our fates," said Kai. "Besides, trial and suffering is how we are made. You often do one more harm than good by giving them the easy road."

"I guess that would make sense," said Max after a second of thought. "It's not like there are any active volcanoes you could fall into in Japan, or any reason to. And Ray wouldn't have had all that electricity."

"Tyson wouldn't've been on a freaking boat when he changed," said Ray, still frowning.

"And then we found Ayah's brother and Tala," said Max, almost happily now.

Ray scowled. "We can't go around picking up everyone who possesses a bit beast, though."

That brought a frightening reality to the table, and Kai could feel the atmosphere about them stiffen.

"Even if we do escape," Ray said, "what about the rest?"

"We're the ones being hunted down," said Max. "Leave them human and they'll be fine."

"But what about the threat of nukes that got Kai and Tyson and Ayah out of the country in the first place? How do we know Japan's even on the map anymore? What about my friends back in my village? They all possess the traits of our bit beasts, we're closer to them then anyone, and they'll be helpless if a nuclear war sweeps across the world."

Ray's voice had risen, and Max's expression had darkened in turn.

"And what about my mom and dad?" Max said quietly. "Or Tyson's grandpa or Hillary, or any of our friends and family that don't possess bit beasts? Ray, I know it's weird coming from me, but maybe leaving my mom behind in LA is just a precursor to what we're going to have to end up doing. And I know you're thinking that, if it comes to that, you'd rather stay and tough it out with your family instead—"

"You're damn right," Ray snapped.

But Max, ever sturdy in his defense, didn't falter or flinch. "But won't you just bring down more grief on them when they have to hide you from these military people? Wouldn't they be better off knowing you are safe?"

"But we have powers, now. Crazy powers," said Ray tersely. "What about protecting them? Couldn't we do that now? Couldn't we just find somewhere out of the way, far away from anywhere that might be nuked or people in general—"

"And take them away from their lives and all they want to protect too?" said Kai sharply, finally coming to the conversation. "Not to mention that's rather prideful of you to think that a little lightning and fast feet are going to protect a whole village from the wrath of missiles and nukes and bullets."

"I don't think you should get a say in this," Ray hissed. "You don't have any family or friends to leave behind. It's not like you care anything for Hillary."

Max blanched and stared. "Whoa, Ray, too far."

But something in Ray's golden eyes had snapped, sweat dewed his upper lip, and his fangs were bared.

"All you really worry about is Ayah and keeping _her_ and whatever is going on in your pants safe, and don't you think for a second that just because you're our captain at the beydish means you have a right to tell us what to do. I'm sick and tired of you strutting around like you are in charge of this whole expedition in hell or something, so just go back to making out with your girlfriend or being injured and let us handle this."

Kai didn't look at Ray at first. Somewhere, his words hit against something with a metallic cling. But all Kai was aware of was a cool, uncomfortable stillness.

In the older time, back when all they really did worry about was the beydish and their coming future as adults, Kai would have just sneered at this and left without a word, especially since it would have most likely come from Tyson in a fit of irrational rage. He would have just let them do it on their own until they realized they needed him. He certainly believed he didn't need them.

But a lot had happened since then. Max shook and burned with fever from a wounded arm. Tala was frozen in the bottom of a boat ready to plunge them into the Arctic ocean. Tyson was hiding from subzero temperature. Kai had nearly died for the uptenth time. The US Military was after them. And there was an exhausted, half-dead girl in the cabin over and down from them.

And this was Ray, cool, calm, intelligent, collected Ray. Not Tyson.

Kai took a breath.

Then decked Ray in the face.

Ray hit the floor. Max cried out.

But Kai didn't stop there. Ray wasn't the only one who had a right to snap from stress, after all.

Knowing the moment Ray recovered from shock his enhanced speed would have Kai done for, Kai kicked him onto his gut hard, straddled him like cattle to be wrangled, and locked the tiger's arms behind him. Then, with a knee on his palms and a hand securing them, he used the other to pull the tiger's face around by the hair.

"How dare you suppose for even a minute that I have risked my life just for myself, Ray Kon. Don't you think for a minute that I don't care as deeply as you about other's survival. But unlike you, I don't have the stupid fantasy that I can save the world. Unlike you, I worry more about keeping all of us alive for another day than I do about the semantics of who is more moral or who is in charge or not. Unlike you, I'm the only one who has actually killed on this whole trip—on purpose—to keep us alive." He gave Ray's head a little thrust against the floor as he let go of it. "Do what you want once we're at that gate and you actually have a choice, but until then, you'll listen to the ones who actually have experience in these matters, village boy, because like it or not, I care about you and the rest of this team too much to let you do otherwise."

He turned back to the stunned Max, who had his hands up to his chest like a frightened hamster.

"We'll take the boat over open waters," Kai said. "At least if Tala wakes up then, we have life boats and wings to take us farther. On land, we have nothing, and twice the distance to travel. If you have any better ideas, I'm all ears."

And with that, he stepped over the still coughing, groaning Ray on the floor, and left, slamming the door of the cabin behind him.


	5. I Don't Care

4

Of course he regretted it. But he rebelled against that care. Screw it all. Screw the world. Let it nuke itself. Let them nuke themselves. Take him along with them, he didn't care, he didn't want to care, he was just so damn sick and tired of it ALL.

And thus he found himself in the last place any of them would want to be: back in the frozen hold at the bottom of the ship.

It did surprise him that Tala had somehow managed to make the hold as cold as it was outside without the sea breeze to nip away your heat. But Kai had felt so much painful cold over the last however long that he just blinked and stood there, wrapping his arms around him and pressing his wings in tight underneath his big coat.

Ray had gotten that for him. Stolen it, even. And the Chinese boy had always prided himself on being honest and good. It must have hurt him to steal it, even as he thought how perfect it would be to cover both Kai and his wings—for him. Not Ayah, who could have used it too. But for the fire that would have suffered most from the cold.

With clenched teeth, he shoved the thought aside.

But then, looking at the ice cocoon which held the last Blitzkrieg boy, he found his metal cage caving in once more.

Tala had lost all his teammates to all this. He had nothing left. He didn't even care if what Kai had told him was real or not. He just didn't want to be alone, and now here he was. Frozen at the bottom of the ship. Alone.

With a guttural groan, Kai dug his hands into his hair.

"I don't CARE!" he roared as loud as he could, even tasting a bit of sparks on his tongue.

The ice swallowed it whole. No echo responded, as it would have with metal.

The suck in of breath after the roar hurt. Too cold. His eyes burned, so he clenched the rebellious bastards shut.

"I CAN'T care!" he amended. "Damnit, if this doesn't kill me, fucking caring will! Why didn't it kill you?" Kai flung an accusing finger at the lump of ice.

But, no, Tala had been top of their class in survival. He freaking went to the frozen tundra to hide out and did so smashingly. Had a cozy little cabin he probably built himself and everything. Freak.

Trembling, eyes still burning, Kai spat a mouthful of sparks onto the floor and stomped his way over to the station where the stereo had been. Might as well make himself useful if he was going to be a stupid, brooding wreck, he figured. Couldn't use the damn radio up in the cabin, oh no. Tracking and crap. But what tracking could there be on a gym class stereo? Time to check up on the world he'd been so blissfully ignoring.

"There's a good idea," muttered Kai as he kicked at the frozen door handle. "Tune in to the apocalypse. Care even more. Freaking, stupid, helpless little girl I am," he accented each word with another kick, finally giving the door a gout of frustrated flame. The ice vaporized, leaving scorch marks on the white painted aluminum, but he got in easy enough after that and slammed the door behind him. At least the office hadn't been covered in ice as well. Not that it helped with the temperature any.

He contemplated setting fire to the wooden desk and filing cabinets inside. But all he needed now was to set the fire alarms loose all over the ship and make everyone run around like chickens with their heads cut off. Real cool guy there, Kai. Punching out your teammate then starting a fire. A real traditional rebel.

So he turned on the space heater (which worked just fine and without a whine), blew some steam on his hands, and set about to getting some news tunes.

Since FM was the short waves, he went straight to AM. Blurbs of Russian went through, interspaced with other languages that were too fuzzy to make out. He heard a thin stream of American that sounded like NPR (even out on the Arctic Ocean. Figures). Finally, he heard a blurb of only mildly staticy Russian that sounded promising. Turning it up, he curled up in front of the heater, nuzzled into his coat, and listened.

"Do me a favor and don't wake up for a bit," he muttered towards the frozen windows.

Right. Because Tala had magic hearing feelers through the ice.

He didn't know how long he huddled there, resisting the urge to go out and start burning down things just because he could, listening to random advertisements and stock numbers. During that time, he figured the world couldn't be all that bad if commerce was still going on, alive and well. Because who would be the heartless loser to play advertisements while there were millions of people burning and dying?

That thought almost made him laugh. Hadn't life taught him better?

Sure enough, after what had to have been an hour of freezing his butt off (the wires in the heater had turned red hot, at least), a news broadcast broke in. A thin, dry sounding man listed off more numbers to the 'Japanese Tokyo Catastrophe' as well as several other cities in western Russia, eastern America, the Middle East, and surprisingly a few tropical islands thought deserted around the cape of Africa. Bombings, the man mentioned now and then, because after what had happened to the capital of Japan, the rest of the world didn't have the stomach for another nuclear catastrophe—or that's what everyone hoped.

As the man went into rumors and reports of hearsay and speculation as to who could be the next nuclear offender, and their next target, Kai slapped off the radio. His heart thudded loud and painful in his chest, as though angry with him. But what could he have done?

 _Tyson's town is a long way from Tokyo,_ he told himself. And it was. Nearly on different ends of the country. But that didn't stop the accusations floating through his head. It didn't matter how he rebuffed them—Hillary and Gramps and Kenny would have just gotten caught up in the mess, maybe even died, anyone else wouldn't have believed him, etc—it still made his hands shake. He had been on that island with Cain. He had been a part of that. He had had the chance to go to LA, to say something. Destroy someone. Kill. Protect.

He dug his hands into his hair again and started up the mantra.

"I don't care." He didn't. He really didn't. This was illogical. He had already said he wasn't stupid enough to think he could save the world. "I can't care." They were just strangers. Millions upon millions of strangers. When had he ever cared for strangers? He wasn't programmed that way. He had killed strangers himself.

But the mantra wasn't a new thing for him. In fact, it was a very, very old thing from just after the days of Russian summer grass and the soft, gray haired mother. When the child Tala stood in his dorm doorway with that silent, open mouthed scream and Kai had thought his face like the howl of a weird classic painting he had once saw. When the chains hit, when punishment was dealt, when he lost under the teachers that would not accept failure, when he set the knife-thin black blade through the vents and across a man's throat for the first time, when he stared at Tyson across the frozen lake, when he breathed and watched a man burn and blacken before falling over the other side of the ship…

The fingertips on his scalp bruised. Hairs popped as they came loose. His head had become clamped between his knees.

"I don't care. I can't care. I don't care. I don't."

And for once, he had a little privacy for his cave in.

 **Just wrote the first chapter of the next book and it made me cry with good feels, so there's that going for the ending of this story. Though I don't usually bawl over something I'm writing, that's just...masochistic.**


	6. The Little Things

5

He woke in the dark, with only the glow of the heaters wires to see by. It had gotten almost comfortably warm in there. For a moment, he just laid there, staring at the burning orange wires and thinking about volcanoes and warm, heavy lava. It was amazing the kind of peace those images gave.

Then he remembered that he had left the hull lights on and sat up. His hand brushed across a plate and it skittered a few inches across the floor, upsetting a piece of bread from it. He stared at the slices of fresh bread, along with the little cup of something and a butter knife, and drew away. Only Ray could have been quick enough to get in and out before he could make a sound. Or perhaps Ayah? But just because she could hear well didn't mean she was any better at being quiet, was she? Either way, someone had seen him curled up on the floor with red eyes and dried up tear tracks or snot tracks or—no, no, his face felt smooth enough.

Oh, screw it.

He grabbed the bread and took a bite. Still warm. So perhaps that was what woke him up.

Did he want to start a bet with himself on who it had been? Or who he would have rather it been?

Nah. He didn't care. He didn't have the emotional energy to care.

So he just let the heavy, homemade bread and the little jar of jam fill him up, curled up next to the heater again on the hard floor, and fell back asleep.

When he woke up again, it was still dark, but he got the impression that a good deal of time had passed. Faculties refreshed, they instantly went back to worrying.

 _What kind of trouble have they gotten into while I was gone?_ he thought wearily, before figuring that, well, they weren't at the bottom of the ocean, so it couldn't have gone that bad. And Ray and Max had seemed equally as upset enough to keep Ayah from giving her brother anymore energy, and if either of them had had the time or thought to bring bread down to him, Ayah was probably in well enough care.

Yawning, he purposely took his time stretching to show his nerves who were boss. Even so, he didn't dilly dally and made sure to turn off the heater before stepping back out into the freezer, which he regretted almost as soon as he did so. Amazing to think he had actually been warm just a few seconds before.

"Screw you, Tala," he muttered as he scuttled across the hold.

He almost expected the ice to start breaking. But Tala had always been the cool cucumber. Insult him as much as you want, push buttons like a maniac, he'd just look at you with the same, blank look. Then royally bash your pride in the moment your back was turned in the most calculated, genius way possible, just to show off how much smarter he was than you at hurting his enemies.

Kai actually had a smile on his face at that thought as he closed the hold door behind him and made his way up the stairs.

 _Time to face the music._

No one was on deck or on the walkways along the sides of the cabin, so he headed up to the control deck. Inside he found Tyson, looking, for once, actually quite vigilant and serious. He turned around with raised eyebrows and a frown as a gust of cold air rushed in after Kai before he could shut the door.

"And the lone wolf appears," he said, still frowning.

"How are the others?" Kai asked, looking towards the communal mattress near the back of the cabin, which was a few mattresses short and empty of occupant.

"Aren't you suppose to be asking how hard I'm going to punch you? Seriously, man, flying at Ray like that? Really?"

"I didn't fly at him," said Kai irritably. "Just answer the question. Then punch me all you like."

Perhaps it was Kai's lack of caring towards personal harm that sobered Tyson up enough to actually answering, and despite his words, the glare he gave Kai as he spoke had a softened quality, or perhaps, a weary one.

"Ayah's still asleep. Hasn't woken up once. The Holocaust survivor woke up enough to eat, then went to straight to her and passed out—don't give me that look. We tried to stop him, but the idiot did this weird thing with those girly feathers of his and blinded us. Nearly pushed Ray overboard too. Ray's checking out some things in the engine room and the boats and some stuff he's cooking, and Max…" Tyson hesitated. "Maxie's sleeping too."

Kai didn't need to ask. He just nodded, mouth tightening.

"Who's been watching the cabin? Just you and Ray?"

"Yeah, though I don't know when Ray's gotten any sleep."

Kai gave a curt nod. "I have my duty, then. How are you doing on sleep?"

Tyson sighed and swiveled back round to the control board. "Honestly, Kai? I couldn't sleep even if I wanted to. Not with everyone in a mess like this."

"Not everyone. I'm fine, and Ray will be once I drag him to a bed."

Tyson snorted. "You're fine? You just turned half of Ray's face purple because he insulted you."

Kai just opened his arms and raised an eyebrow at Tyson's reflection in the windshield. When Tyson echoed the look, Kai gestured to his chest. _Go ahead. Hit me._

Tyson sighed again. Then he pulled off his shoe and chucked it at Kai, hitting him smack in the gut hard enough to knock the wind from him.

"If you know you were an asshole, say sorry to him already. And make it real, man, because I don't have the energy to give you what you're worth."

Kai smiled weakly, then left to his duties.

Ray was where Tyson had said he'd be after checking the engine room. In the kitchen, bent over a pot, a mess of bags and food preserves around him.

"Cooking can't take this much time," Kai said on entering.

Ray jumped and blinked at him through dark eyes. Kai's gut gave a painful twist at the purple blossoming over the left side of his face. He knew he had a mean hook, but wow.

Ray must have seen Kai's wince, for he nodded appreciatively and looked back at the pot.

"It is if you don't have ingredients to recipes you know and fresh food. The thing with preserved foods is they're all dried and take hours if not a whole day to rehydrate, not to mention exactly great tasting. I don't think you guys get how much I was depending on Max's fishing, and he's had to stop long before he got that burn because of how cold the water was getting." He brought up a ladle and gestured to it. "Come on."

Kai didn't say anything. He didn't protest or wrinkle his nose. He just walked over and stood besides the ladle. But he didn't open his mouth. His eyes didn't leave Ray's gold, slit-pupil stare once.

Ray released the ladle to hook on the side of the pot.

Then slugged Kai across the face.

Ray had been strong before, just as Kai had. He had had martial arts training before too. He had also had his strength enhanced by his transformation as well, and it was enough to lift Kai off his feet before he fell to the floor, stars bursting in his eyes.

"Now we're even," said Ray. "Matching bruises and everything. So, when you're up to it, I really could use a second opinion on this porridge. It should be easy on the stomach, but easy to eat if you don't have an appetite too, so I'm aiming for sweet, but not too sweet."

As Ray went on about his rice mush, Kay gingerly fingered his jaw and ran his fingers down his eyes to disperse the stars. In a way, the pain made him proud and relieved, but not just because of Ray's forgiveness. Ray was strong. Thank God, Ray was strong. Perhaps, then, Ray would be okay. He needed Ray to be okay.

As told, Kai dutifully got up and opened his mouth for Ray to pour it in. Ray didn't bother to blow on it, but, as they both knew it would, the boiling heat didn't bother Kai. Fire beast and all that.

"Needs more salt," said Kai after a moment.

"That's what I thought. Salt is easy for the unwilling stomach to swallow as well as sweet, and it compliments the sugar so..." Ray tapped the salt above the pot.

"You're talented," said Kai, a compliment he never gave easily.

"Thanks."

"And you need to sleep. The salt better be all that's left, because I'm dragging you to bed if I have to. No bother arguing it either, we need every able body."

Ray sighed much as Tyson had. "No need to drill it in, I'm going. Be a pal and try to wake up Ayah enough to eat this, will you? She's still all gray. And Max too, he should be in the same room."

Kai nodded. "Her brother too?"

Ray's look darkened. "I'm not bothering with that…" he closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nostrils, which wasn't encouraging. "Yeah. Might as well."

But Kai frowned. "You can understand when he speaks?"

"I don't need to understand to know the look," said Ray evenly. "Or the intent to push you overboard. If that guy knows we saved him, he doesn't care. I saw looks like that back home when the Unmentionables came into town, and I don't like the idea of getting that look from a guy who doesn't even know me."

"The Unmentionables?"

Ray ducked his chin down, looking sheepish. "It's just a stupid name the elders would give to these certain people from Mongolia. They were once soldiers who committed genocide of a whole village up north for some reason that isn't important, then deserted to China to escape the government. I don't know the whole story, but there were women and children in the group to, so I never paid it much mind."

Kai didn't ask more. He knew of that event. Kind of hard to not know of it, in a world known for its heavy treaties against firearms. And it had been over the rape of a magistrate's daughter. Probably wouldn't have been such a big deal if she hadn't had fourteen brothers and no other sisters. Yay plural marriage.

So, he waited around for Ray to finish up, then took the hot pot straight off the stove without any oven mitts (perish the thought of being blocked from so much lovely heat), and headed off into the cold with the little stack of bowls on top and spoons in his pockets. Ray led him to the room next to the cabin, where he had deposited Ayah, and then went up to sleep on whatever mattresses were left of the communal bed in the cabin.

The cabin's layout was like all the others on the boat. A set of bunkbeds on one side, and a full size mattress on the other, with a door at the head of the bunkbeds that led to the tiny bathroom. It was utilitarian, at best, with white sheets, cotton blankets folded up at the foot, and spare blankets in a plastic satchel underneath the beds. No rugs. No curtains. No pictures. And the light was an LED tube locked away behind a glass that melded into the ceiling.

Still, after the semi-darkness of winter outside, that lone light against all the whiteness blinded him. Then he realized the blinding factor wasn't going away. His eyes weren't adjusting.

Luckily, he heard him coming long before enough to drop the pot and roll into a blind tackle. His shoulder hit boney side and the rest ended up in a confusing jumble of feathers and pointy, bony body parts.

Blindness aside, however, a stick of string cheese was still an emaciated stick of string cheese.

Once Kai had the guy beneath him, the light finally started to dim and his stinging eyes caught up. The bony face glared up at him through a scowl, the other's wings forced at uncomfortable angles against the beds. The cabin was, after all, utilitarian. No room for pointless fru fru, or in this case, impromptu wrestling of beings with giant wings.

Kai bared his teeth. "I save your life, I bring you to Ayah, I even bring you damn food, and this is the thanks I get?"

He got a surge of pleasure as the man beneath him struggled to break freak of his weight and Kai easily held him down. Standing up, Eiden could have been a whole head taller than Kai, but in his starved state it did him no good. Lovely.

Now, what to do? He couldn't kill the guy. Maybe he could tie him down with some rather abrasive ropes. In another room. On the other side of the ship.

"Ayah mine."

Kai stared as the garbled, heavily accented, but still Russian words came out of the white man's mouth.

"You. Child of man," or human, if translated another way, which Kai figured Eiden was probably calling him. But the use of the conjunction, eek. "Ayah _mine_. Sister. You—you bastard. Child of man, killeth. Killeth! No near Ayah!"

"Are you trying to say killer?" Kai asked back in Russian. "Or that you want to kill me? It could go either way."

Eiden visibly flushed and his light blue eyes flashed. But he didn't say anything more, clenching his jaw shut.

"Oh, no, go on. I've never heard someone butcher my mother tongue so well."

When Eiden only increased his attempts to wriggle free and get back at Kai, even managing to flip loose a wing from under the bed to wap Kai on the back, Kai just sighed and gave the kid a sound slap across the face.

"No. Ayah mine," he said, very clearly and slowly, as though to an idiot. "You brother. Gross. Eww."

The opened mouth look of shock, then furious indignation told Kai that Eiden had understood, and the wapping of wings increased. Max had started shouting out in protest as rebounding wings whacked him awake on the bottom bunk and sent bedclothes from the top flying like a tent with a mind of its own. The poor lump that must have been Ayah on the full size bed only unconsciously curled in tighter under the assault.

A short burst of cackling took hold of Kai before he grabbed a wayward wing with his hands and puffed out a warning burst of hot steam, eliciting a shout of pain from his prey and giving him the hesitation he needed to stomp down the last wing.

"Do not harm anyone on this boat," he said, again slowly and clearly in Russian. "Or I will burn you. With fire. You know the word fire? Understand? Or do you need a demonstration?"

Understanding, or something akin to it, had already begun to dawn on the man's face with the pain. But while his attempts to get free waned, the searing hatred in his eyes didn't.

"What the heck is going on?" cried a groggy Max who sounded on the verge of tears with bemusement. His face was flushed and speckled with sweat, and his eyes were squinted up from pain.

Instantly, Kai felt guilty for his little sadist moment and switched to English. "I got some rice porridge from Ray. He says it should appeal to a lack of appetite."

Max grimaced and looked down at the crystal-feather winged guy pinned beneath Kai.

"Uh…"

"Don't mind him," said Kai, already planning how he'd get Eiden around and in a hold that would stop those silly wings from causing more calamity.

And as he looked to the door where he had set down the pot, he had to stifle another triumphant cackle on seeing that not a drop of the porridge had been spilt.

It was the little things that count.

 **Hey guys! LoweFantasy here. Just dropping in to ask you all to check out my published works sometime on Amazon. My pen name is T.S. Lowe, and there are three of them. ^.^ If you have the time, that is. It would help me out A LOT! Like...super bunches.**

 **And if you guys need anything, feel free to drop me a PM! I love hearing from readers and helping out where I can.**


	7. Wolf Vigil

6

He ended up having to shout down Ray from his pre-nap vigils, who was all too happy to help keep the flailing rainbow wings in check. They weren't picky where they stuck him, and this was a ship. There were ropes everywhere. Once they had the string cheese tied to a bed, Ray reluctantly offered to take over feeding him by hand so Kai could take care of Ayah. After a moment of thought, Kai agreed, but worked a promise from Ray that he wouldn't prolong his fatigue if the ingit decided to be difficult.

"Be good," he said to Eiden in the stupid Russian.

That earned him yet another death-by-glare, to which Kai just rolled his eyes and said it was be good, or starve. Then, just to be a brat, and since Ray couldn't understand him, he told Eiden he was going to Ayah. Kai's Ayah.

"Gack! What did you say to him?" cried Ray as their roped mummy began to flail like a worm on a hook.

Kai just smirked and left. It had been a while since he'd done his traditional exit anyhow.

Max had managed to fall back asleep by the time Kai returned. Ray followed, but only long enough to scoop up a bowl of the porridge and head back out. Kai loaded up a bowl for Max then tapped the turtle on the forehead.

"Whaaaaaat?" he whined.

"Food."

"I don't want any."

"Eat. You don't know when you're next meal will be."

"Fiiiiiiiine, but close the gates already. There's too much pneumonia."

Kai grimaced and gingerly helped Max up. There weren't any pillows to prop him up by, so he'd have to trust his teammates sturdy armored back to keep him upright. He stayed around long enough to see Max take a first tentative sip before turning back to the still form on the bed.

His stomach did an awful jerk. On seeing his hands trembling as he reached out for her, he mentally slapped himself and tugged back the sheets to reveal the bundle of off-white feathers within.

"Ayah?" he murmured, slipping his hands underneath her softness and scooping her close. The bundle parted and a sickly pale face rolled against his shoulder. Her closed eyelids were shaded lavender, and he could see blue veins crisscrossing down her neck and lone bare shoulder sticking out from the too large neck hole of her shirt. At least her lips had warmed to a soft pink.

He brushed a thumb across her eyelashes, calling her name for a lack of any better idea of how to wake her up, at least, that he was willing to do. After the third time, her eyelashes fluttered beneath his thumb and she gave a little moan.

"Come on, wake up. Food."

In response, she turned her head and nuzzled into his chest, nose wrinkling when she found the tough leather of his coat rather than flesh.

"You can be warm once you eat. Come on, I know you can hear me."

Another moan, another wrinkling of the nose, then she gave a sigh and didn't close her mouth. After a few more minutes with nothing else, he figured that was the best he was going to get and leaned over to the end table for the soup bowl. Just as he was thinking it was going to be difficult, he spilled the porridge across the sheets trying to get it to her. He attempted it one more time before giving an exasperated sigh, stuffing the rice mush into his mouth, and leaning down to part her lips with his own. She stiffened. Then relaxed and probed the edge of his mouth with his tongue.

He only remembered Max when he didn't hear him comment. Flushing, he sat up and turned around, only to find Max asleep sitting up with the bowl only half empty and threatening to spill. That meant he had to untangle himself from Ayah to rescue the bowl and nudge Max down with a cacophony of squeaking springs. Then he quickly returned to Ayah, who he had to shake back to semi-consciousness before filling his mouth and slipping the food into hers. He kept his fingers on her throat to be sure she was swallowing instead of choking.

Despite the awkward circumstances, and the painful jerking his gut kept doing at her gray weakness, a familiar peace flowed back to him. He had done something like this before when she had first hatched. Feeding her this time was just as gratifying as it had been then. Perhaps it was because, in the crazy desperation for control, knowing he could do something so directly to care for her comforted and pleased him on multiple levels. At least, feeding her with something as gentle as a kiss, he could feel himself melting. The crazy thought passed through his mind that he wouldn't mind doing this for the rest of their lives—which he quickly amended as he wouldn't mind being there whenever she was ill or hurt. No. Not mind. Wanted to. Desperately so.

Somewhere in the middle of the bowl, as her slow, tired tongue brushed his bottom lip, he reached out and brushed against it with his own. She tasted of rice and sweet milk. Another taste and he found her again, that sweet roll fresh from the oven, yeasty and aromatic.

The last few bites of the porridge were a struggle, as she had fallen ever deeper to sleep. Reassured that Max was truly gone to the world, he whispered encouragements to her he had never dreamed of saying to keep her awake. The rice porridge wasn't exactly heavy stuff, and he wanted her to have her fill so she could sleep deeper and get better sooner. Once the last mouthful was down, he gave in to the temptation to trail slow, light kisses across the soft contours of her face. The poor, bruised look eyes. A white, firm cheek bone. A corner of a lip. Then he undid his leather coat and gave her what she had seemed to want in the beginning: warmth, wrapping his wings about her and coaxing the fire in his gut to a heady burn. He heard a low, almost purr like noise in her throat, then perfect stillness.

Kai was shifting to lay them both down when the door opened and a hated, frigid gust of arctic air blew in.

"Tyson," Kai snapped.

The dragon yanked the door close—on his tail.

"Ow! Ugh, sorry, sorry," he pulled in the offending tail and shut the door. "Okay, Ray's out and I'd be a lot more comfortable if one of us was watching Tala, or keeping an ear out for him or whatever."

"How very responsible of you," said Kai, doing his best to only sound completely serious.

"We were doing it on and off without you anyways," said Tyson irritably, then hesitated. "How are they?"

As he asked that, he looked to Max, whose arm had doubled in size from bandages and whose face still glowed from fever.

"As good as they're going to get with any of our help."

Kai proceeded to the painful operation of uncoiling his sleeping Ayah from his warmth and to the thin blankets of the bed. The extras underneath had already been piled ontop of her, but they were thin, cotton things. He thought of the thick, fluffy comforters he had at home he would have loved to pile around her—while Tyson wasn't watching, of course.

"The heater in the office down there is actually pretty good," said Kai. "Why don't you take some blankets and get some shut eye down there? That way you can keep an ear out for any cracking ice."

"Uh, will I hear it?"

"Haven't you heard ice crack before? In the last few days?"

Tyson pouted. "Yeah, huge freaking chunks of ice."

"You can hear a tiny ice cube crack when you drop it in hot soup. Trust me, you'll hear it. Go get some rest."

"What about you? I can't just leave you alone up there while the rest of us sleep, no way!"

"I'll have Ray right next to me. And the stri—Eiden is probably wide awake as well."

The corner of Tyson's mouth twitched. "I heard that. What were you going to call him?"

Kai sighed, as many of his happy feelings were draining away now that he had finally gotten Ayah tucked away as close to his satisfaction as he was going to get. "Grab one of the walkie talkies under the control desk. I'll radio if I need you. But you all need rest, and since I managed to steal some already, I'll be fine." Kai tapped his foot against the tall stockpot. "Even got food."

"Ugh! Fine. But only because I don't have the energy to smash that stubborn head of yours. But on one condition: what were you about to call your arch rival in love? Come on, wingman here, I've got to hear it."

When Tyson put it that way, it made him want to tell him even less. But Tyson wasn't the only one who didn't have the will to smash hard heads.

"String cheese."

Tyson gave a loud snort and guffaw. Kai took the opportunity to start nudging him towards the door, having reached down and picked up the stock pot with its short tower of bowls on the lid. Tyson was still chortling when they returned back to the cabin for the walkie talkies. Kai couldn't understand what was so funny about it. Maybe Tyson had sprung a loose screw. Wouldn't be the first on this trip. And by the red whites and shadows beneath his dark eyes, exhaustion couldn't be too far from the funny bone mark either.

"Go. Sleep." Kai stuffed the walkie talkie in his hand.

"Let me get some of that porridge at least."

Bowl of rice meal in hand, walkie talkie tested and hooked to his coat pocket, Tyson toddered back out into the cold, leaving Kai in the quiet control room with an unconscious mound of blanketed Ray curled up on his side in the corner.

After scooping up his own bowl, Kai settled himself on the swivel chair and settled in quite nicely to the quiet. The readings on the board weren't exactly comforting: gas low, gauges blinking at the ships dangerous tilting, a pressure valve wandering a bit too close to the red line, but for now he had food, his teammates were settled in, and he had been allowed to do what he could to ensure Ayah's welfare. And, as an added bonus, he got to tie up the ungrateful ex-fiancé' whose hypothermic presence had given him so much grief.

Yeah, nothing was perfect. But in that moment, elbows on the dash, the taste of the porridge sweet as it reminded him of her, Ray's soft breathing behind him, life was almost good.

It even had the decency to stay that way until six hours later at four in the morning when a hollow, resounding ping shivered through the mass of the ship.


	8. The Coming of Ice

**Next chapter, before Monday, as PROMISED. Love meh.**

7

To Tyson's credit, he didn't completely panic, though his voice over the walkie talkie had that high pitch most people get when woken with a start in the deepest of sleep.

" _Dark! Dark! And he's oozing out—oh god, he's oozing. No. No, I lied, that's ice, no…slush?"_

Kai glanced one last time over the dials as he answered. "Remember where those 72 hour kits are?" He grabbed his coat off the dash.

" _Bunch of backpacks next to the boat with weird shiny blankets and stuff?"_

"Get those into the dingy along with one of the rubber life boats and some tarp. Let me know when you're done, I'll take care of Tala."

" _Roger."_

"Tala's out?" asked Ray, who was already gathering himself up and off the mattresses, still wearing his snow gear.

"Yes." Kai hesitated, thinking fast, fingers flying over his buttons and zipper. "Any idea on when that ice will melt?"

"No better than you. I did make some hard tack, though, and we'll need water. I'll help Tyson get the boat ready."

"Check on Max and Ayah first will you? Oh, and the brother. After the boat."

Ray made a face, but nodded and opened the door for Kai. As they headed out and down the metal stairs to their respective goals, an ominous creaked echoed from within the boat.

"It should go that quick, right? The water _is_ Arctic," said Ray with consternation.

"Salt water," said Kai, as though that explained something.

Tyson came bursting out of the door to the hold the moment they reached it. His eyes were wild and reflected the starry night, but he had his game face on. Him and Ray didn't have to say anything, instantly seeming to understand what the other was about and ran side by side around the corner to a second, smaller, closer to deck level that held the dingy as Kai swung through the open door and jumped down the stairs, three at a time.

The moment his foot hit ice it slid out and over him, slamming him on his back and knocking the wind out of him. Wincing, wheezing, he rolled to his side and pawed the ice. The rough texture that had been there before had vanished, leaving a damp, watery slide. A cold splash on his head told him what was happening to the ceiling.

Kai uttered his foulest Russian curse.

"Bless you," said a weak Tala.

Kai quickly brought his head up and found the mess of pale limbs and shock of red that was Tala, sprawled out at the foot of the hollow hands of the cracked cocoon. Kai didn't bother getting to his feet, opting instead to crawl as quickly as he could across the mess of wet ice and slush, stinging and numbing his hands and shins in the process.

Tala gave him a dazed, dreamy sort of smile, his eyes half lidded. He didn't look nearly as emaciated as Kai had when he had hatched, but there was definite loss of muscle mass which made Kai frown. He barely took the time to take in the Tala's red, white striped tail and his…lack of ears?

"Like what you see?" Tala mumbled.

"Can you hear me?" Kai asked, stomach clenching in horror.

"Loud and clear. And you smell awful, what have you been bathing in? Burnt pee?"

Kai allowed himself a quick, relieved puff of air through his nose before taking hold of Tala's naked, but blessedly dry, arms and heaving him to his feet. Tala wobbled, his dank, damp tail swinging behind him like a loose belt trailing circles in the film of water on the floor, then stumbled against him.

"Food," he grumbled. "Can't you get a man some food before shoving him around?"

"There will be food once we're out of here. Your ice is the only thing keeping this ship from sinking, remember?"

Tala hung there, bracing himself against Kai's arms with frigid, icy hands, before lifting his head to take a look at the icy cavern about him. Even as he did so, a light rain of icy drops pattered from the ceiling, glittering in the light from the office. Then back at the now wet looking icy egg he had come out of.

"Shit."

"Bless you," said Kai wryly. "Can you walk?"

In answer, Tala pushed him away. For a second, his knees trembled and his feet stuttered to find hold, but then straightened his shoulders and threw back his head, blue eyes bright with excitement. As he did so, two red triangles of what looked like his short, red hair stood up high.

Tala gave a toothy grin, flashing elongated canines in the process.

"Yeah, let's get this freak show on the road."

Kai blinked. "You have ears."

Tala tilted his head to the side in confusion, which only served to strengthen the new canine look.

"Yeah, so do you."

"Wolf ears." Kai patted the top of his head. "And a tail."

Tala touched his head, frowning, "Shouldn't we be hurrying…" His fingers hit the fuzzy triangle. It twitched. His eyes widened and both hands flew to his butt.

A roar of laughter caught Kai by surprise. He slapped a hand over his mouth out of reflex.

Tala just grinned. "And the plot thickens. I'm a furry! I'm even naked on top of it!"

Kai fought back a snort. "Yeah. Great. We're sinking?"

"But you still got a moment to appreciate it, right?" Tala flashed the fangs again. "After food, of course. I am quite delicious."

"Just move!"

"Okay, okay. I thought I was the captain, psshaw. Mutiny."

But Tala trotted on ahead over the slippery ice as though it were nothing. Kai did his best to follow, but he hadn't the affinity for ice skating on leather boats that Tala had on bare feet.

Somehow, he did make it back to the stairs in time to hear a ear splitting crash of a ice stalagmite crashing to the floor.

"Did you get us to the tropics or something?" Tala asked, eyebrows furrowed.

"Just move."

And up and out into the cold. While Kai shivered and clenched his wings in, Tala didn't even pause, stepping out butt-naked and staring up at the clear, frosty night sky. He kept his eyes up as Kai pulled him along towards the control cabin that had had the spare clothes.

"We're still near the Arctic Circle," he said with a frown. "Where are the Northern Lights?"

Kai tugged him up the stairs and into the control deck, where he left him to go dig out clothes from the lockers in the back. His mind hadn't missed Tala's comment, though. There had been stormy skies every night that they had traveled within the reaches of the Northern Lights, but on the night it was clear there were none. Even as he thought on that, turning to toss clothes at Tala, he didn't miss Tala's uneasy tightening to his thin mouth.

"What's our latitude?" Tala asked.

"We'll find out once we're off this ship."

"Something feels wrong." But Tala stuffed himself into the cargo jeans, even tucking his new tail down his pant leg.

Another ominous creak vibrated through the ship. The floor vibrated.

"A lot is wrong, take your pick," said Kai tersely. "Here, boots." He tossed them at Tala's feet.

"Aw, how cute, you even remembered my shoe size."

"It's the same as mine."

"No it isn't. You're feet are huge."

"Says the one who kept stealing my boots."

"That's because yours were always so much warmer!"

Another creak, and the ship tilted. Not far, but enough that Kai found his legs tightening to stay in place. Tala quit his jabbering then and focused on shoelaces. Then they were both back out in the night, and Kai all but leapt from the cabin, using his momentum to swing into the sick cabin where Max and Ayah were. On finding darkness, he figured Ray had yet to reach them and flicked on the light to prove it.

Max scrunched up his feverish face and turned it towards the pillow.

"Could you carry anyone?" Kai asked, before realizing the answer in catching Tala's shaking knees. "Nevermind, just…stay there."

"Yes, sir."

"And quit it with the obnoxious, this is serious." Max or Ayah? Ray would come eventually to get the other. But still—

The metal about them moaned and the floor jerked up, tipping Kai into Ayah's bed. Well, that answered that question.

Tala swore.

Heavy footsteps and panting announced Ray's arrival. "Yo, Tala. Who you got, Kai?"

"Ayah," said Kai.

Ray jumped into the darkness towards Max, who had started to grumble something about Tyson's snoring, though it turned to a large yelp of pain as Ray tried to get him onto his back.

"A little help here?"

Before Kai could turn, Tala was there, grip beneath Max's armpits.

"Lord, kid, did you ever gain weight."

Kai slung Ayah over his shoulder. A cacophony of creaks and groans had started up around them.

"The brother?" shouted Kai over the noise.

"I untied him," said Ray through teeth clenched in effort. "He can walk himself. Augh, Max. Can't you hold on or something?"

"Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Ow…why's everything so loud?"

Kai followed Tala and Ray out, climbing the incline. They almost had to run with one foot on the side of the cabin towards the bunker. The dingy hung with one side against the side of the tug boat, Tyson hanging on the lines tying it to the pulley. Kai all but threw Ayah to Tyson as a small explosion of water shot out from behind them through the boat.

"Eiden?!" cried Kai.

Tyson, clinging to Ayah for dear life, nudged a chin behind him. A pale head poked up from the depths at the same time. Ray dove in, Max and all, Tala at his heels.

Kai took hold of the rope to heave himself in—a wave of water crashed into his legs. Searing cold snatched the breath from him, blinding him. He felt the rough robe slide loose from his fingers, saw the cold, dark fingers digging deep into the stars across his vision—

Then a hand grabbed the front of his shirt and heaved him free. He slammed into the bottom of the dingy.

"Cut it!" shrieked Tyson.

Kai didn't have a chance to move. The world fell, tumbled, rocked, and sprayed with pinpricks of freezing agony. Only when a semblance of awareness returned to Kai did he manage to swallow his whimpering and roll to his numb knees. The skin on his legs and the bottom of his wings smarted as though with a real burn, back when fire could do the same to him as any other person. He called the names of his teammates one by one, frantic.

"We're fine, Kai, calm down."

The sound of Tyson's voice sent a shudder of relief through his body, undoing the adrenaline, and sinking him into blackness.

 **Because the arctic ocean is probably the worst place a flame person could be.**


	9. Frost Burn

**What is wrong with fanfiction these days? It keeps updating in that stupid HTML format. Sorry about that. Also, sorry that it is a short chapter. If it's too short for ya'll just let me know and I'll post up another one.**

8

He woke up with a blanket wrapped about his legs instead of his pants and tucked into the tiny hollowed area beneath the prow and steering of the dingy with two other bodies. A mixture of something like fresh bread and roses told him Ayah was against his chest, and a not unpleasant, dirty sock musk told him Max was against his back. He tried to move and ended up hissing from the protests of his smarting legs.

"Do us a favor," came Ray's voice at his feet. "Stay in there and keep those two warm and save us the room. It's cramped up here."

"Can I have my pants at least?" Kai grumbled, his voice bouncing back to him from the close walls of the cubby.

"Dude, and have you pass out again?" said Tyson, sounding somehow even closer. "Another reason you should just stay in there. If this water is cold enough to make you pass out."

Heat pooled into Kai's face. He didn't even want to grace that with an answer.

"I don't know what's the problem," came Tala, who could have been near the back of the tiny dingy, though that wasn't much distance at all. "This feels amazing."

"Stop bragging, not everyone can be some kind of ice wolf."

"Cybernetic enhancements and a furry…hey, China boy, toss me some more of that cracker bread stuff."

"You've already eaten half my supply!"

"Can you at least tell me where we are?" interjected Kai, already beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic. There was hardly any room in here to breathe with three normal people, let alone for two with wings and one with a hardened back of armor.

"About fifty-four miles from shore," said Ray.

"Chugging along at about forty miles an hour," said Tyson proudly.

Suddenly, something clamped tight around Kai's burned ankles and pulled. Even as Kai cried out in pain the hands vanished with shouts from the others.

"What the crap, dude! Back off!"

"Ack—Tala! Wings!"

"He wouldn't dare—AHHH!"

Kai's world gave a violent rock. His gut crashed into Max's feet, and his legs protested at the bodies suddenly jostling around them outside. Tears sprung to his eyes, and with a sudden surge of alarm and rage, he reached down, took hold of the edge of the tiny opening to the hold he now hung half out of, and shoved himself out into the tangle of bodies and feathers.

Three things hit him at once. One, that someone had taken his coat and very, very cold air had sucked to him like iron shavings to a magnet. Two, that Eiden had been the one to reach between Tyson and Ray at the helm and grab his legs. And three, that he had come out at just the right time to throw his blanket covered knees into his gut with the rocking of the dingy that the light bird had caused himself.

Opaque, glass like feathers shot up into the sky. Three boys clung to the sides of the ship for balance.

Meanwhile, Kai did his best to ignore the sting of ocean drops on his back as he leered down at a dazed Eiden.

"I am sorry," he said in Eiden's favorite slow Russian. "Did you want that space?"

"Stop the boat!" whined Tyson. "I'm gonna be sick, all this rocking."

"Just hold still!" snapped Tala.

"I got the wheel!" Ray had lunged across Eiden and Kai. The boat's motor slowed.

But Kai and Eiden only had eyes for each other. Eiden's lips curled. Kai lowered his chin, furrowing his brow, but carefully backed off of the other man. He more important things to deal with—like his lack of coat. It hurt!

As though reading his mind, Ray grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him back towards the cubby hole, banging his head on the frame in the process.

"Get back in!" Ray shouted angrily above Kai's cursing.

His body gave him no other choice. In pain, seared by cold, trembling so hard his bones shook, Kai crawled back into the tiny, dark space between Ayah and Max and curled in to tend the frazzled heat within him.


	10. Finite

9

It felt much longer than it took to get to shore. Despite the close proximity of two bodies, cold still seeped in around Kai, and the tiny boat tossed so much on the waves that by the time they had reached shore the only one who hadn't thrown up was Kai himself, and that was through sheer force of will. The moment they pulled him out of the hole, though, he was hung over the edge of the boat and tossing remains of rice flavored stomach acid into the sea.

Only then did they give him back his pants, just as wet and frozen as before.

"We need you to fly to shore to pull us in," said Ray as he handed them to him.

Kai looked out to the craggy, ice locked shore and grimaced. Why didn't that land look welcoming? Even after the puking?

"GPS says we're only ten miles north of our destination," said Tyson, as though that should cheer Kai up about slipping ice-burnt legs into frozen pants. "And look! The sun's come up! Sort of…"

The orange orb of the sun hunkered close to the horizon, as though shyly peeking in on them, while night still brimmed the other end of the sky. At least the ocean wasn't pitch black anymore.

Even as Kai braced himself, pants in hand, for the world of pain he was about to plunge into, Tala got up from his end of the boat and started stripping. The other four, exhausted boys could only stare as the newly minted wolf boy stepped up to the side of the boat with all his wrinkly bits exposed to the world and dived over into the gray, frozen waters.

Tyson gave a strangled sort of 'heh.'

Kai hugged his wings in tighter about him. "Guess I won't be needing these, then." He handed Ray the frozen pants.

Tala's head poked above the lapping waves a moment later. "Are you going to throw in the rope or what?"

His teeth weren't chattering in the least.

"Sure," squeaked Tyson. Though he seemed to shake himself out of his empathy freezing as he reached for the end of the rope and tossed it in.

Slowly, but surely, they made it to land. Kai managed to make himself some sort of pants by using a pocket knife from the survival bags to cut up the middle of the blanket they had thrown over him and was almost not completely in freezing agony when he fluttered down to shore to help Tala pull the rest of the boat with the others onto the rocks. Though without his coat, most of his effort went into squeezing the fire within him as hot as it would go and out into his bare limbs. The heaving involved with pulling the boat in helped. But once the little dingy got as beached as it could, the cold quickly plunged in, swiping away his breath and bringing his wings about himself so tight, several muscles pulled.

Ray threw his coat at him, yelling something, but Kai didn't make it out over the rustle of leather and the waves slapping against the stone and ice shore.

"At least there's land," said Tala next to him, kicking at a few pebbles, and looking horrendously comfortable despite not wearing a coat.

Though he did have a point. Ice shores meant they were still beyond the Arctic Circle.

Alas, once his frozen fingers closed up the coat as far as it would go and pulled the fur hood tight about his face, a snake-like, bitter cold still circled his warmth, numbing his skin and extremities.

Kai watched as his breath rose in a column of steam. His teeth chattered like maracas.

Then he was back to the boat to catch Ayah as Ray handed her out. Her brother watched on with jealous eyes, the only one of the group who looked just as cold as Kai felt. His starved limbs could hardly hold himself let alone his sister, and they all knew it.

As Tyson heaved Max out and onto Ray's waiting back, Tala, the ever voice of optimism, stated a fact they had all been trying to ignore.

"Tiger's not gonna be able to haul that kid ten miles."

As Max's weight flumped on Ray's back, he stumbled and fell to one knee.

"I-I-I'll b-b-be heh-hehelping." Kai pushed out.

Tala just gave him a droll look. Then gave a sarcastic glance down at his shaking knees, which had even pinched in on themselves.

"We need shelter," he said. "Five out of eight of us won't survive the trip. We'll have to send one or two of us to get to the town and get us aid."

"Are you insane?" squawked Ray through clenched teeth. "Have you not seen yourself lately?"

Kai expected Tala to make some stupid comment on the sexual popularity of furries, but, of course, he would choose now to be serious. After all, Tala had always been guarded about those he wasn't close friends with. Tyson and the others probably would have called Kai insane if he had told them what a obnoxious joker the wolf actually was.

For some reason, though, that comforted Kai. Familiarity had a way of doing that. And it felt nice to finally hand the reigns of the decisions to Tala, who then turned to Kai.

"What can you do with fire? Any chance of you melting us out a shelter?"

Kai flashed him a toothy smile and readjusted Ayah in his arms, already cramping from cold. "I can create some good sized fireballs from my hands. But with how cold it is, I'll probably have to breathe it."

Tala didn't let out the low whistle Kai knew he would had they been alone. But he saw the mirth jumping about in his glacier blue eyes.

"In that case, load up, Tyson. You get to be our pack mule."

"I don't need you to tell me that, wolf boy, I already figured that."

But even as Kai watched him throw on the fourth backpack, he knew they'd have to take a second trip anyways. Tyson had his ever impressive pits of energy, but he hadn't the strength transformation or build up that Ray and Kai had. He still held a bit of the scrawniness from his change.

But, knowing Tyson, he wouldn't let that stop him and would get hurt.

"Take it easy, Tyson," he called out.

Tyson opened his mouth to protest, but just then a frigid gale of wind swept in from the ocean and stole away the words. For a moment, Kai found his vision blurring, a pent up scream of agony on the back of his throat.

Then he blinked hard and it was over, but Tala had stepped closer. His sharp eyes had tightened. Kai didn't like that look.

"He's right, Tyson. We can take another trip, but we need shelter. Now." _You need shelter now,_ Kai heard.

With a huff of wounded irritation, Kai started stomping up the craggy shore to the icy cliffs. Already he had spotted a likely trail up the incline. After the gust, however, even moving couldn't ward off the razor-like chill creeping deeper and deeper into his chest.

He glanced down at Ayah when he reached the first icy step. He couldn't see her face. They had bundled her up so tightly, she could have been a corpse in a bodybag made of blankets.

That thought drove him up the first half of the cliffs, clinging tight to her.

It would have been hard without carrying a full grown woman with wings. With her, he nearly fell back several times. A few times he found himself giving Tala an early preview of his fire abilities by puffing out flames to burn deeper steps into the ice. It didn't occur to him until he was almost to the top that it would have been smarter to let Tala go first, but knowing him he would have scaled the icy slope within minutes.

He broke over the top and involuntarily fell to his knees. His trembling, frozen, burnt legs would not go any further, and his stomach churned and heaved from the effort.

An instant later he felt Tala's hand on his shoulder, squeezing it.

"Take a break, warm her up, I'll find us a spot."

Kai had not the breath to answer.

A few minutes later, Ray collapsed besides him, Max sliding unceremoniously off his back.

"He tried to climb up himself," Ray gasped, then muttered something in Chinese.

Eiden floated down before them and made no attempt to comfort, only curling in on himself into a tight, feathery ball, shivering.

Kai glanced at Max, who was also breathing hard, or more like wheezing, and on his side. His feverish face had taken on a blotchy, white and red appearance.

By the time Tyson fell on Kai's otherside, Tala had returned, but Kai had no clue how he would get back up. Every muscle in his legs spasmed out of his commands like rods of twitchy rebellion. But then, feeling a feather brush of Ayah's breath against his neck, he somehow found once more that steely grit that got him through the tortures of the Abbey, when you were beaten until you got up despite the pain, and stood. It felt much like having been transformed into a newborn giraffe.

Tala's eyes were to him, though, when he pointed towards what looked like nothing. As they got closer, however, the alcove of ice, making a jump down about the height of a short man, became apparent.

"Give her to me," said Tala, when they reached the edge.

Kai clutched her in tighter. "You're freezing." Kai didn't miss that his teeth had stopped chattering.

Neither did Tala, whose eyes tightened even further.

"Well give her to someone while you do your thing. Once you've dug it out, lay down. I'll do the rest."

Kai hesitated, then glanced behind him to see Ray and Tyson working with a stumbling Max between them. He waited till they were near enough that the whistling sea breeze and distant waves couldn't drown out his voice. Then he called over Ray and held out Ayah to him.

No sooner had he done so, then Eiden, quick as the light he manipulated, zipped between and yanked his sister from Kai's arms. Blankets fell from her head, releasing billows of gray-white hair into the winds and snows. Her legs fell ankle deep into the snow.

Before he could even blink, Ray had snatched her back and thrown the blankets over her head, shooting the scrawny man sharp threats with his feline eyes.

Turning his back to the ensuing glaring contest, Kai jumped down—and collapsed onto his face.

Cold. Cold. But something overtook him now that his body had become horizontal. An almost irresistible urge to slip away, to let his lead limbs stay where they were, swept him down, pressing him deeper and deeper into the snow. Cold, cold, but so…so tired…

Tala's hands yanked him upright, slapping him hard across the face.

"Don't take that nap," he barked. "Remember our training."

Kai wanted to point out that he hadn't been a fire phoenix then and grit his teeth, shaking his head hard. He tried to breathe in deep, but the cold burned all the way down, gagging him.

"Idiot," Tala breathed, covering Kai's mouth with a hand.

Despite being an ice whatever person now, his hand provided the cover Kai needed to take a warm enough breath to reach the heat still simmering deep down. He pushed aside Tala's hand, took a step towards the icy wall, and blew.

It wasn't anywhere near what that effort would have usually produced. When the fire snuffed out, the oval cave only went arm deep.

This time, Kai covered his own mouth to breathe, then ducked into the hole and blew again. Fire flecked back into his face, warming him, welcoming him. He crawled deeper, heaving and puffing, digging towards the flames for a place for her, for Max, for exhausted Ray and Tyson. Without them, Kai knew he would not have had the fire enough to melt in as much as he did. Without them, he would have died long before he'd met Ayah.

Breathless, nauseous, exhausted, he finally gave himself a break to give the steam a chance to clear. Once it did, he found a chamber the size of an average bedroom with a low ceiling dimly lit through with what little sunlight still remained on the horizon to shine into the crawl-space hole he had burned through. Even as he hung there on his hands and knees, he could feel the inch or two of water on the floor beginning to harden. His poor hands didn't feel the cold anymore. Only his forearm registered the drag of hardening water.

Then Tala was at his side, shoving him into the wall of the chamber and out of the water.

"Stay," he said.

Kai just blinked. It had gotten so dark. Had the sun set already? Setting so fast. But it was enough to see the faint form of Tala leaning down over the water, seeming to breathe on it himself. He gave a grunt of surprise, then satisfaction as he continued pawing around the chamber.

Then Kai blinked and the chamber was full. He could smell them, his teammates, hear their heavy breaths, the click of the buckles on the back packs, the slide of legs.

Ayah. He heard her name on his tongue.

Almost instantly, Ray was there, tugging at Kai. Kai had no power on his body. He tipped forward into Ray just to find the tiger's arms weren't empty. A floof of blankets, through which he could smell cinnamon buns and roses, met him. Instantly forgetting Ray was there, he turned his head to nuzzled into it.

 _Warm. He had to warm her._

But even as he breathed, no heat ran along his tongue. Only darkness and the taste of ice.

"Got any light, String Cheese?"

Ray's chest rumbled with low mirth at Tyson's question. Kai decided he liked that sound. Though how did he end up with his head on Ray's chest? Where was his soft Ayah? Warm. Had to warm.

He was lifted from the darkness by a cold hand on his arm. His skin curled in repulsion from it, but he hadn't the will to do so himself. He heard Tala's voice, as terse and cold as it had been during the final match of the World Tournament. He heard his name, but couldn't register anything else. He heard…he didn't know. Too tired. So very, very tired.

And once more, in that senseless abyss, he found himself turning towards a sudden source of ethereal warmth. Light broke in about him, and he felt her fingers in his hair before he registered the words she spoke.

 _"You have yet to find a safe place for your future."_

He scrunched up his nose and turned his face away from her light.

Words drifted out without any effort on his part to conceive them.

"I'm dying, Dranzer. Probably already dead. There isn't much I can do about that."

" _You have risen from the ashes before."_

"That was in beyblade, Dranzer. I'm not immortal. Just like you." He let out a sigh and felt himself falling deeper, farther away from even the memory of cold.

The fingers on his shoulders arched into claws. " _I will not let you fail yourself."_

The claws dug in deep, breaking through skin, white-hot lava incarnate. He tried to pull away from the pain, the disturbance, tried to turn back towards the peaceful darkness away from the cold, but Dranzer's light was irresistible. It came closer and closer, growing in brilliance till he could see the back of his eyelids. He could feel his burnt legs again, stiff and painful. His wings echoed the ache, needle-like points of pain reacting to the static tearing through his muscles.

But the claws remained. A violent shock ran through them, jerking his muscles and yanking out a weak, warbled scream from his throat.

"He's back! Quick, Ray, in!"

A mad shuffling of his world occurred then. Flashes of cold and black and pain and twitching muscles, then the kicking legs he didn't mind at all, because they were warm, slid down beside him.

Then warmth enveloped his front. His feathers quickly drank it in, spreading it about his wings and back and down to his legs as best as they could.

"Tyson, otherside. Keep Ayah towards Ray."

"J-j-just m-move it."

More shuffling. Bits of…blanket shuffling? Opening?

"Max? Max," finger clicking. "Come on, Max, get back here, it's your turn. Down at the feet." A sigh. Then a shuffle.

A burst of cold that nearly threw him back to the black. Then more heavenly warmth pressed up from below.

Someone pushed something up against his back. Hands tucked in about them, careful not to touch Kai.

"Alright, Eid…oh. Well, whatever. That works all the same." A long breath out. "You lot stay like that. Ray, you got a hand on his pulse?"

"Yes."

"You sure you can get the shocks just through him?"

"I can only do my best. Just hurry."

Tala? Tala was leaving?

An image of Tala's thin body sprawled across the ice before his egg. He'd lost so much muscle. His knees had shook when he'd first stood.

He was an Abbey boy. Hiding weakness had been broken into them.

A hush of ice on ice.

Wait…the others wouldn't know.

Kai tried to find his voice. His jaw wouldn't move, and he found himself carelessly shoving air against his throat as he tried to speak through his teeth, like in a bad dream.

"S…stop…him."

Fingers he hadn't noticed shifted on his throat. "Kai?"

He tried it again, but darkness was returning.

Tala rose in his mind, white shoulders thrown back, red head tilted back to the sky.

"Stop…"


	11. In The Embers

10

This darkness had the traits of shallow sleep with moments of timeless blanks. Cold stilled his memories of warmth. Pain a constant companion. In spurts his thoughts would break through, but only in the simple form they had once been when he had been a little child—in images and impressions. Ray's and Tyson's voices sprinkled through most like pleasant wild flowers through the last of spring frost. An overwhelming smell of coffee, that came with an annoying rumbling and spurts of sharp gasoline and fumes. Ayah. Must find Ayah. Max. Must see to Max.

Tala. Had to get up to stop Tala. No one else knew.

Voices other than Tyson's and Ray's. They sounded so strange. Had it been so long? So long since he'd actually just listened to the cadence of a voice not theirs? Wait…there shouldn't be by other voices.

His brightest moment of consciousness only rewarded him with a view of wooden beams holding up a lumber ceiling.

They argued. He tried to breathe, tried to find himself to stop it, protect—he had to protect them—

Then a great burst of warmth as he had never known it swallowed him and any remains of his consciousness.

Hunger brought him around. Heavy, he tried just going back to sleep, but the hunger was piercing and nauseating. If he didn't find food, his stomach would force him to get up to vomit anyways. So he groaned, felt out his limbs, and opened his eyes.

Fire blocked it.

Forgetting momentarily that he was a fire breathing boss, he shot up, a cry in his throat. Then his brain caught up with him and he swallowed it down in time to recognized that he was being watched.

A little, red haired girl, probably about eight or nine, sat cross legged a few feet away from the Kai's fire. She had to scramble back as a plume of ash and specks of coal poured down from his shoulders.

"Sorry," he said reflexively in his mother tongue, even as she jumped forward to stamp them out. His head still felt plenty fuzzy.

She jumped up as though shocked.

"You're…You speak!" she squeaked. He instantly recognized the Russian, though a heavily country accented one.

He looked back down at the bed of coals and ash framed with thick, burning logs that he laid on. "Uh…"

Then his stomach lost it's patience and he retched. The harsh contractions brought him back down to the coals, heaving, shaking.

Through it all the girl shrieked, "Mama! He's awake! He's choking! Mama!"

He certainly felt like he was choking—then he really was as ash, fine and clumpy, sucked down into his lungs, clogging his throat.

Heavy footsteps. Something like a cane of ice hooked about his far arm and flipped him out onto more cold. Tongues of flame trailed after him just to be scared back into the stone fireplace.

Black was clouding his vision. He couldn't see, he couldn't _breathe—_

The cane hooked about his neck and brought him up. It was the motion his stomach needed to give an almighty, wet heave and a stream of clumped ash spewed out onto his bare lap. The cane held him in place as he retched and coughed and gasped, slowly warming to the temperature of his skin.

Then, at last, it was over, and he just hung there relishing in the feel of air down his throat, cold or not, as the lower end of his wings lavished in the large, stone fireplace. The only reason he hadn't brought the fire out with him was because of the stones paving the floor, warmed beneath him by the fire.

"I told that son of bitch to clean out the ash— _where is he_?" The country accent was even heavier in the woman's Russian.

"Outside with Yovanne, I think."

"Is that why you were watching the bird boy? Don't just nod, yes or no."

"Yes, Mama."

Fingers tentively felt out his shoulder. He shivered at the contact.

"He's hot, but he won't burn you now. Get him cleaned up and some hot water, if he can stomach any. I'll be back once that teenager has been flogged within an inch of his life, so help me God."

The woman turned and stomped away. A frigid blast of cold air snaked by as she opened the door and didn't close it quickly enough behind her, and his cold abused body scrambled back. His hands slipped on a mess of his satin feathers and he fell, cracking his head on the stone floor.

"It's okay! Calm down!"

But he was already up and weakly crawling his way back to the fire, tailfeathers flat against the back of his thighs. A bought of weak hunger brought him to a stop. His stomach gave a loud, angry moan.

The young girl gave a nervous laugh. "I can get you food. Would you like some food?"

"Yes," he mumbled.

Her feet tapped away and he crawled closer to the fire. He did some glaring at the beds of ash beneath the burning logs, as though that would make them behave, then crawled back into the heat and hunched his wings about him like a gargoyle. The ends of his long tail feathers trailed along the stony floor. When the girl returned with a bowl and metal tankard, she paid special care to step around them. She hesitated before holding out the tankard towards the fire.

"The bowls made out of wood, though," she said hesitantly, then flinched as he reached out of the fire to meet her half way.

The tankard heated up quick, but the water luke warm. He let it warm up a bit more before clearing his throat with it and stopping when his stomach hurt. He then set it aside on the stones outside the fire and cleared his throat.

"Thank you," he said.

She gave a the smile of a little girl happy to play doctor. "You're going to have to come back out here for food."

He knew that. Didn't mean he was in any rush.

"Stand back a bit more," he said to her, as she looked ready to throw the food into the fire anyway. She scrambled back at his command, however, and he wearily crawled back out of the fire to accept the bowl from her.

At the first touch of beef stew on his tongue, Kai went to heaven. It had been so long since he had tasted beef. It seemed like he'd been trying to live off of seafood and rice forever now. And before he knew it, it was gone.

"Thank you," he said again, with a polite incline of his head. "Is there…any chance of seconds?"

"Sure!" she chirped, and was off with his bowl once more.

With his hunger satiated and the cold staved off, some of his coherent thinking began to return. He stared at the stones in the triangle of his crossed legs as his mind groggily rebooted and memories began to slide past his eyes. Snow. Cold. A cave. Dying. Tala.

When the refilled bowl of stew pushed into his vision, he snapped his head up, startling the girl for the third time.

"Are the others here? The others like me." He took the bowl carefully, apologizing again for making her uneasy.

"Oh! You don't make me uneasy, birdie," she said with a glow to her cheeks. "You're beautiful and soft, like an angel, with white hair like Jesus. I'm just afraid of scaring you. Mama says that people aren't nice to those who are different, even if they are beautiful and have hair like Jesus, and that you had been hurt and chased by bad people. I don't want you to think I'm bad. A bad person, that is."

"I don't think your bad," said Kai gently, not adding that he would never accept food from someone he thought he couldn't trust, half awake or not. "But my friends, are they okay?"

She nodded her head, but not as vigorously as an eager to please nine year old would have, and he caught a tightening of consternation around her eyes.

"The tiger and the…the blue lizard guy have been sleeping a lot. They're the ones that pushed you into the fire—we were all so scared! But then you didn't burn, and they—Papa knows a little Chinese, you see. The pretty angel woke up just a little while ago, her voice is so pretty! Is she the angel God sent you to help you through her trip? I didn't know angels got tired. And the other one with diamond wings, the boy, he's so skinny I can see his bones! He was tired too, but he kept giving us scary looks. Did we do something bad?"

"No. He's just grouchy. And the blond?" interjected Kai as gently as his frayed nerves would allow. "The one with the armored back and the burnt arm."

Her nose wrinkled, but not in distaste, but in the crumpling up of dismay.

"He's sick," she said calmly, but with a quiver at the end of her voice. "His arm's really bad. We don't have a fancy doctor, at least not in the winter, but Mr. Sonya had some medicine. He gave him a shot and took care of his arm, but he says if it doesn't get better…" she leaned in, eyes ever reflecting the thoughtless blunt of youth. "They might have to cut it off. That happened to Daddy once. A horse stomped on his big toe and it got all—"

"And the wolf?" Kai asked, chest too tight for patience.

Here, she frowned. "Wolf?"

"A boy with red hair and ears. And a tail."

Her eyes widened slightly. "There's another one of you?"

His stomach clenched with the same ice outside. "Yes. You didn't see him? How did you find us?"

"A little yellow phone thingy," she said uncertainly, wiggling her hand about as though holding it. "Daddy and Uncle put it on the table when they pulled you in. Mamma said that's how they must have found you."

His blood quivered. Despite the cramping of his stomach, he forced down the rest of the stew, knowing how precious a gift food was in this barren winter landscape. He only asked for a blanket to wrap himself up in before asking her to take him to his friends. She happily complied and led him up a narrow staircase to a loft above the main room below. Heat from the fire gathered up near the ceiling here, added too by a smaller fireplace set into the rising chimney of the one below.

Here there were three beds, one bunk and the other about the size of a full mattress. Patchwork quilts, well loved and tattered, piled high on each and he could see that one of the bed's were occupied.

But sleeping on a thick bear rug before the fire were the curled forms of his other team members. They made a clumsy sort of triangle, with Eiden, the brother, on the outside curved around the sleeping form of Ayah on the bare edge of the rug.

He gave them a long look to satisfy his nerves. Hearing Tyson's snores went a long way in calming the trembling iceberg his gut had become.

Then he softly padded over to the body in the bottom bunk.

First was the splash of messy, golden hair across the pillow. Then, just above the corner of one of those tattered, loved quilt was the freckled, pale face of Max. Kai reached out to set the back of his hand to Max's forehead. Even though he knew his body-temperature couldn't be a reliable comparison to anyone when checking for a fever anymore, he still let out a puff of relief when it registered as cool. Damp, but cool.

When he pulled away, the young girl carefully reached out to do the same.

"Oh, his fever is getting better," she said before turning to give him a broad smile. "See? Everyone's going to be okay, birdie. We won't let the bad people hurt you."

He stared at her, giving himself a moment to believe it, before bowing his head again in mute gratitude. If he spoke, he feared his voice might give out on him.

But he couldn't rest yet. There was still one more unaccounted for.

"Is your father around?" he asked.

"Papa's sleeping. It's very early. Very dark. But Mama gets me up when she does to tend the chickens and the cows. It's my job to milk the cows, you know. I make very good milk. I wish they could wait an hour more though."

Fearing her chattering might wake up the sleeping group, he put a finger to his lips and gestured towards the staircase. She made to look sheepish before making her way to and back down the stairs. He followed her back to the warmth of the main fire.

"Can you wake him up?" he asked. "I don't mean to be rude, but my wolf friend…he might still be lost in the snow, and he's very weak."

Her mouth popped open, displaying an open surge of empathetic concern, and nodded.

"He doesn't like to be woken," she said, almost to herself, before trotting off out of the main room and down what could have been a hallway.

Kai didn't move as he waited, despite the tempting heat of the fire tickling down his back. He pulled the blanket in tighter about his body, dressed only in feathers. With steely resolve, he forced himself not to think of what revelation might come out of that hallway.

 _Besides, Tala should be fine,_ said a stalwart part of him. _He's the ace at survival, and he was in his element. Ice wolf and all. Ten miles isn't that far. And he wouldn't have gotten lost._

But the girl had said her father had been able to understand them because he knew Chinese. Tala spoke Russian and would have had no problem explaining—

He slapped down the steel again, even as his insides pulled up tight against his lungs, threatening to suffocate him.

 _They had the GPS. They could have only gotten that from Tala. Tala could have passed out from exhaustion once he got there. He probably was already taken in by somebody else._

Yet the seconds marked by the large, old, wooden clock on the wall came by as drowsily as the night. The hour read six o' clock. One of the yellowed numbers was missing on its wood paneled face.

For some reason, he found himself repeating what the girl had said to him about keeping them safe from the bad guys to himself.

Then a bear of a man appeared in the shadows of the doorway, short crop hair at odds with his large, chest broad black beard. The face that peered out above the wiry mass had worn, leathery skin, and serious black eyes. He had a heavy blanket over his shoulders and long john's, much as Kai had a blanket wrapped about himself. The red-haired girl followed up on his heels.

"Leana's say'n somethan 'bout a wolf?"

The low voice vibrated through Kai's chest, shaking a bit at the hard fear that had balled up there.

"I'm sorry to trouble you from your rest—" he started.

"Pah," he waved a heavy hand at him. "I'm fine. You're the one that nearly died and then got thrown into a fire."

Kai didn't smile. "Is there any chance you met another strange one like us with red hair and wolf ears? He had that GPS, he was heading here for help."

The worn face, with its black, bear-like eyes, were still. For a long minute, the man said nothing, nor did the little red head at his side.

"Sir?" the word came out a bit strangled.

"Yeah…I saw him," he said slowly, and now he was looking at his feet, which terrified Kai. He wanted to grab him by the sides of his beard and yank his head up, force him to not withdraw from his gaze.

"Is he hurt? Is he alright?" _Tell me he's hurt. Tell me his legs have frozen off. But don't tell me—_

"I'm sorry. He collapsed dead the moment I he saw that we had spotted him."

The rest of the words came to Kai as though through water, or from across the canyon. His vision unfocused, going blurry.

"Not surprising, the kid was wearing practically nothing. Miracle he was alive—no way he could have gone ten miles. That Chink kid up there says he was something about ice, like you were to the fire though and the Sonya Doc said it wasn't from cold, from exhaustion. Said he'd seen a horse show the same signs too. By golly the kind of will a sane human being would need to do that, though. Horses don't really get it, you know."

"Daddy, you're talking too much," said the little girl in a quiet, quiet voice.

Family trait.

But the walls were turning about him, as though he were on a MerryGoRound and they were the landscape slipping pass. For some reason, though, they never made a full circuit, though. He only saw the same wall and corners framing in the black bear and his ginger cub.

"Where is he?" Kai heard himself saying, because these people must have missed something. Tala had, like, super ice powers now. He was a pro at survival. He wouldn't just die after they had come this far, so soon after being reborn. That was just…insane. They were idiots.

"Sonya's got his body in his cellar. Keep's them frozen until we can bury them—"

"Where?" His throat felt inflamed.

"Kid, you ain't got no clothes, and you just nearly froze to death. I can't let you out there."

But Kai was already turned towards the door, each step like stone.

"Woa! Stop! Ya have a death wish? There ain't nothing you can do for him now—"

A big hand on his arm stopped him. "Let me go."

"I'm sorry, kid, these things happen. I know how you feel, my little boy—"

"Let go before I burn down your entire house and everyone in it."

The moment he said those words, his body shook as though struck by thunder and he gasped.

 _What was wrong with him!_ –"No! No, I didn't mean that, I wouldn't—you don't understand, this—this guy's been trained to survive the worst. He wouldn't have just dropped dead, I can't just—I have to see—"

The hand gave his arm a squeeze. Only deep sympathy shone out from the man's dark eyes.

"It's alright," he said gruffly. "I understand." The beard vibrated and he gave Kai a friendly short of little shake. "I swear to God, I understand."

Kai found himself just staring back at that horribly pitying face, his frame shaking—the weak, pathetic thing that it was, not being able to stand a bit of damn, stupid cold—

And he shook his head.

"Tala's strong," he said.

The sad man only pushed him back down before the fire and moments later pushed a bottle of whiskey into his hands.

 **I swear I make up for this in the next book! You'll see! First chapter! I didn't plan for this, I swear! The character went off and did his own thing without my permission!...I totes cried.**


	12. Sequel Alert!

Btw, the next book, "Before Beasts, There Was Time," is now UP! Go! Fly! Enjoy!


End file.
